Richard J. Schechter

Richard Schechter is a former federal prosecutor, having served in two U.S. Attorney’s Offices (New Jersey and Connecticut) for almost three decades. His positions included Assistant U.S. Attorney in trial and appellate divisions, Senior Litigation Counsel, Frauds and Public Corruption Deputy Chief, Criminal Division Deputy Chief, Ethics Officer, and Professional Responsibility Officer. Professor Schechter has extensive criminal trial experience including trying complex corporate fraud and police corruption cases. For instance, during his DOJ tenure, he was designated as a special prosecutor to try one of the largest accounting fraud trials in the nation’s history, a nine-month trial resulting in the conviction of the vice chairman of the Cendant corporation, who received a ten-year prison sentence and a restitution order of more than $3 billion. 

Professor Schechter is the recipient of two DOJ Director’s Awards given for outstanding contributions to the Department. As the DOJ’s expert on evidentiary privileges, he authored the chapter on “Privileges” in the Department’s Grand Jury Manual. He was routinely consulted by federal prosecutors throughout the country on matters of evidentiary privileges. 

Professor Schechter has vast teaching experience having spent almost 20 years instructing Assistant U.S. Attorneys at the DOJ’s National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina.  There he taught both civil and criminal AUSAs on various subjects including trial advocacy, evidence, professional responsibility, and grand jury practice.  He served as an Adjunct Professor from 1996-1999 at Seton Hall Law School and has taught a course on Privileges at the University of Texas Law School since 2024.Professor Schechter has guest lectured at various law schools including Columbia, Yale, Stanford, Northwestern, University of Connecticut, and Quinnipiac; to undergraduates at West Point; and to U.S. Attorney’s Offices in Texas, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio and Louisiana. 

In addition to his career as a federal prosecutor, Professor Schechter served from 2016-2019 as a Senior Justice Consultant to the Grace Farms Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, where he worked on human rights issues including anti-sex trafficking and forced labor initiatives.While at Grace Farms, he also authored several articles and was often quoted by journalists on various criminal investigations and human rights issues. Currently, Professor Schechter consults for criminal defense attorneys in white-collar prosecutions and in post-trial and appellate matters.

Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Professor Schechter was a litigation associate at the New York City law firm of Breed, Abbott and Morgan. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.